Iran’s Supreme Courtroom has now ordered a retrial, Raesian stated, including that the judges determined that Salehi’s earlier jail sentence of six years and three months — on prices of “spreading corruption on the Earth” — violated “Iran’s multiple-offenses guidelines, and was in extra of the authorized punishment.”
Iran’s ISNA information company additionally reported on the Supreme Courtroom’s determination to overturn Salehi’s demise sentence. Iran’s mission to the United Nations didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from The Washington Put up early Sunday.
Salehi was taken into custody in October 2022, after he publicly supported the protests sparked by the demise of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, which befell when she was detained for allegedly violating Iran’s strict Islamic gown code for ladies. The weeks-long protest motion, which united totally different factions of Iranian society and introduced a significant problem to Iran’s clerical management, was in the end snuffed out by the nation’s authoritarian system.
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Salehi launched two songs in help of the protests, together with one which quoted the mantra utilized by protesters: “Lady, life, freedom.” One other, titled “Divination,” contains the road: “Somebody’s crime was her hair dancing within the wind.”
Salehi, a uncommon and unapologetic voice of defiance inside Iran, was an inspiration for the protest motion. He was one in every of a number of high-profile figures arrested in Iran within the crackdown in opposition to the protests over Amini’s demise, through which a minimum of 500 individuals had been killed and tens of hundreds detained, in keeping with rights teams.
Salehi was briefly launched from jail in November 2023 however was rearrested lower than two weeks later, after saying in a video that he had been tortured and held in solitary confinement.
When Salehi’s case was appealed to the Supreme Courtroom that point, it referred to as on the decrease court docket to drop a number of the prices in opposition to him. However a revolutionary court docket, a part of Iran’s parallel justice system, reassumed jurisdiction and sentenced him to demise in April — a transfer condemned by human rights teams, consultants with the United Nations and White Home nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan.
A coalition of rights teams working to defend Salehi welcomed the transfer by Iran’s Supreme Courtroom.
“It’s a clear demonstration of the injustice of the decrease court docket determination, and we’re delighted that Salehi now not faces the specter of execution. The Supreme Courtroom discovered that the demise sentence delivered to Salehi was extreme and didn’t adjust to Iranian legislation,” stated Index on Censorship, the Human Rights Basis and attorneys representing Salehi in a assertion revealed Saturday.
Negin Niknaam, one in every of Salehi’s closest confidants and the one that manages his social media accounts from Germany, stated the demise sentence “put enormous psychological stress” on Salehi, his family and friends. “They wasted a 12 months of his life in jail. And now took away his demise sentence so simply,” she advised The Put up. “It’s not as if we’re all celebrating this.”
“Toomaj’s soul has been broken, our psychological states have been broken — all for a sentence that ought to have by no means been handed down within the first place,” she added.
For the reason that protests over Amini’s demise, authorities have additional tightened their management over Iranian society. Shortly after the primary anniversary of the protests, Iran’s parliament authorized a invoice that may impose extra extreme punishments on these discovered to be violating the gown code for ladies, which features a obligatory hijab, or headband. A constitutional council in Iran returned the invoice to parliament for evaluation late final 12 months.
The Supreme Courtroom’s determination comes lower than per week forward of presidential elections in Iran to switch President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash final month. Some activists and supporters of the protest motion have referred to as for a boycott of the election.
Salehi’s case will now return to the decrease court docket that originally sentenced him to demise — Department 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Courtroom — so he can obtain a brand new sentence, in keeping with the Index on Censorship assertion. The group referred to as on the court docket to respect the rapper’s rights in that course of.
“Even a shorter interval of imprisonment can be an injustice: Salehi has finished nothing aside from to name for his, and different Iranians’, elementary rights to be revered,” it stated.
Miriam Berger and Susannah George contributed to this report.
